Reliving PJ's Catalogue: Part II, Joe vs., Well, vs.
Louie,
As you know, in October of 1993 I was a junior in high school and you were drunkenly running into walls as a freshman at NJIT. My musical tastes, as I’m sure yours, were limited, scattered, and sometimes embarrassing. Guns ‘N Roses, Tom Petty, Metallica, Def Leppard, Harry Connick, Jr., A Tribe Called Quest…you get the idea. Of that strange group only Tribe and Petty still warrant any playing on my boombox.
Pearl Jam had only entered into the mix a year earlier when a funny guy who refused to wear pants in the winter, and made us laugh like no one else before or since, loaned me a copy of Ten (and no, I didn’t make a recording of it by placing two stereos together and playing one into the other). I should take poetic license here and tell you that I remember how I felt when Ten was popular, but I don’t. I know that it rarely ever left the stereo in our room and that people hailed it as a new era in music. But what I really remember are the little things…wailing the lyrics to Alive on the short drive from home to the Highland General Store before work, a friend thinking the lyrics to Jeremy were “Came down on me, the wicked” instead of “King Jeremy, the wicked,” and for the first time loving music like it were a girlfriend or a family member. I have no points to argue with you regarding Pearl Jam’s first LP, it is a landmark on the musical landscape. It is Thriller. It is The White Album.
And yet, when I listened to vs. in preparation for this post, I sort of wondered what the hype was about for Ten. Their second album is sonically richer and lyrically more strident.
Cont'd http://www.unfinisheddad.typepad.com/unfinisheddad/2009/10/joe-vs-well-vs.html
As you know, in October of 1993 I was a junior in high school and you were drunkenly running into walls as a freshman at NJIT. My musical tastes, as I’m sure yours, were limited, scattered, and sometimes embarrassing. Guns ‘N Roses, Tom Petty, Metallica, Def Leppard, Harry Connick, Jr., A Tribe Called Quest…you get the idea. Of that strange group only Tribe and Petty still warrant any playing on my boombox.
Pearl Jam had only entered into the mix a year earlier when a funny guy who refused to wear pants in the winter, and made us laugh like no one else before or since, loaned me a copy of Ten (and no, I didn’t make a recording of it by placing two stereos together and playing one into the other). I should take poetic license here and tell you that I remember how I felt when Ten was popular, but I don’t. I know that it rarely ever left the stereo in our room and that people hailed it as a new era in music. But what I really remember are the little things…wailing the lyrics to Alive on the short drive from home to the Highland General Store before work, a friend thinking the lyrics to Jeremy were “Came down on me, the wicked” instead of “King Jeremy, the wicked,” and for the first time loving music like it were a girlfriend or a family member. I have no points to argue with you regarding Pearl Jam’s first LP, it is a landmark on the musical landscape. It is Thriller. It is The White Album.
And yet, when I listened to vs. in preparation for this post, I sort of wondered what the hype was about for Ten. Their second album is sonically richer and lyrically more strident.
Cont'd http://www.unfinisheddad.typepad.com/unfinisheddad/2009/10/joe-vs-well-vs.html
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